Netflix’s junior college football documentary Last Chance U returned July 20th for a third season. You can read a full review here. We’re doing a breakdown of each episode, and they will, of course, contain some spoilers.

Reeling from a stunning and thorough loss in Week 1, the Independence Pirates are desperately trying to regroup in “Humble Your Pie.” That means early-morning practices and a lot of shouting and angry exhortations from coaches.

Head coach Jason Brown seems to have determined that none of his many ballyhooed recruits — most drop downs from Division I schools — will amount to anything. Several of them appear to be dealing with injuries, some real and some not so real (defensive tackle Emmit Gooden at one point claims to have the flu while looking like the least flu-stricken person I’ve ever seen.) Brown threatens to cut everyone, then of course cuts nobody because he coaches a horribly brutal game and it’s not like you can just get new players to show up in Independence, Kansas in the middle of a season.

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Quarterback Malik Henry and wide receiver Carlos Thompson become the focus of the episode. They’re shown battling with the coaches (Carlos is kicked out of practice in one insane scene that I wrote about in my full-season review) and Brown points out that skill players can end up being prima donnas who ruin your team, so his challenge is to figure out a way to harness their energy without breaking them.

This should be possible, as he has a deeper connection with Henry and Thompson than any other players on the team. Thompson has followed him for three years — at one point Brown talks about driving him from Garden City, Kansas to California so Thompson can stay in the coach’s beach house while they are between schools — and Henry was mentored by the same Southern California coach who developed such a strong rapport with Brown as a player that he calls him “my son.”

Henry, who tells us of his career falling apart at Florida State under a cloud of depression, is in Indy purely because his mentor believes Brown’s tough love (and similar disposition as a hot-headed know-it-all) will help him.

The most crushing part of the episode (and there always is one on Last Chance U) is when we find out that Thompson’s mother apparently had to take out a $14,000 loan in order to pay outstanding debts and procure his transcripts from all the schools he has attended so that he can be admitted into Indy. Thompson also worries throughout the episode about his home town of Houston, which is under water because of Hurricane Harvey.

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Henry, meanwhile, emerges as a whip-smart presence in practice — one who frequently correctly diagnoses many of the problems with the Pirates. He’s in the concussion protocol so is limited throughout the week but can be heard complaining about disorganization and lack of a cohesive game plan, both of which led to the stunning Game 1 loss. At one point he tries to talk to his receivers about how to run a route — pretty common for a QB at any level — and is chastised by an assistant who thinks he’s going too far. Henry later points out that the coaches’ demands for a leader to emerge sound hallow when he’s not actually being allowed to lead.

On the field

The Pirates play at Fort Scott. The decision to start backup QB Brandon Bea — mostly as a message to Henry — backfires almost immediately as he makes bad reads and worse throws. A turnover and TD run — by Jamal Scott, the presumptive 3rd stringer — puts Indy ahead, though, and a “humbled” Malik (according to Brown) enters the game with a beautiful deep pass down the sideline. Scott scores again.

Finding a back becomes the narrative of the game. Rakeem Boyd, the Texas A&M drop down, struggles. Kingston Davis, who’d played at Michigan, fumbles.

Indy only leads 14-10 at half. Henry isn’t getting rid of the ball quickly enough under pressure, and also mouthed off to an official and earned a penalty late in the half. Boyd, one coach says, has talent but no vision. Things are tense in the locker room.

Thompson’s whirling return on the kickoff changes the momentum. Henry eventually scores on a read-option, making it 21-13. From there the Pirates defense holds and they go on to win 30-16. QB coach Frank Diaz tells Henry he “became coachable” during the game. Henry sort of smirks.

The celebration doesn’t last long: Brown tells his team, still on the field, to turn its focus to next week’s game against Garden City, the defending JUCO national champions.

Best scenes

LaTonya Pinkard, the English professor, convenes a book club. Many of her students, she says, haven’t read a book since elementary school. She has them read Nathan McCall’s “Makes Me Wanna Holler,” and the camera catches her reading a passage where McCall tells of other students moving away from him in class and calling him the n-word. She challenges the students in the room to explore why black men feel that they have so few possible avenues to success: is it because, as Gooden suggests, “they’re not built like that” or is it because the system has been built against them?

Thompson, after meeting with Brown, decides he’d like to address the team after practice. His heartfelt speech appears to bring the players together: “This is real [expletive]. I’m kinda disappointed in myself. Because before today I hadn’t really bought into the team, I’m just being real. I was out here half-[expletiving] it. … We got an opportunity to do something big here fellas. That’s just some real [expletive]. … The collection of talent we got here, we really could do something special. People done wrote us off. Ya’ll all know we got our ass busted that first game, 70-21, I don’t gotta speak on that [expletive] … If we get this brotherhood thing going and really get this down as a team we could do something special fellas.”

Best quotes

“I don’t want to say they take the easy way out. But like, really, if we black, the only thing they know is rapping, playing ball or going to the streets. We don’t grow up talking about being a police or a doctor.” — Gooden, during book club

“Rah-rah yourselves, mother[expletives].” — Brown’s pre-game speech.

“Oh my life. They trash. They cheddar. We can burn their ass.” — Thompson, on Fort Scott

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